English cricket plans new 100 balls-a-side tournament

LONDON: The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has proposed a 100-balls-a-side format for a new domestic competition that will start in 2020.

It had been thought that the eight team men’s and women’s competitions, due to involve city-based sides rather than the traditional 18 first-class counties, would have a standard 20-overs per side format.

But English men’s county cricket, which pioneered the 20-over game as a professional format, already has the Twenty20 Blast, while the Women’s Super League is also a 20 overs per side competition.

Instead, in a bid to make the new tournament “distinct”, the ECB has now opted for an unproven and briefer format that would, if adopted, differentiate the event from existing Twenty20 franchise competitions. An ECB statement issued Thursday said the competitions would take place in a five-week block in the middle of the season.

Under the proposal, which has still to gain final approval, each team will face 15 standard six-ball overs with an additional 10-ball over at the end of the innings. That would mean the tournament deviating from cricket’s Law 17.1 which clearly states: “The ball shall be bowled from each end alternately in overs of six balls.”

PAINE: TWEAKS TO TEAM CULTURE NEEDED

MELBOURNE: The Australian team do not need to make wholesale changes to their cricket culture as a few tweaks should once again endear them to home fans, according to Test captain Tim Paine. Paine, 33, believes there was not much wrong with the culture and it was never ques- tioned during Australia’s home triumph over England. “Obviously, we’ve had this incident which has brought everything to a head,” Paine told reporters in Hobart on Thursday. “But during the Ashes, there wasn’t a lot said about our culture.

“Looking back, it’s just a few little things that we can tweak and do a little bit better as a team. If we do that, I think the Australian public will jump back on board pretty quickly.”